


when i go back home, i'll go to sleep

by maternaljoke



Category: SMPEarth, Sleepyboisinc, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Found Family, Gen, and fail, i try to be deep, its pathetic really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24507052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maternaljoke/pseuds/maternaljoke
Summary: Up close like this, the figure's eyes look black. All pupil and sclera, glistening dots of ink on a blank page. Like a pocket of night sky, dotted with white. An inverted star.
Relationships: Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF) & Wilbur Soot, no shipping get fucked
Comments: 17
Kudos: 235





	when i go back home, i'll go to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> this body’s at an end  
> this pale, decaying flesh  
> but i will be again  
> made into light
> 
> when i go back home  
> you won’t see me  
> —  
> teen suicide - untitled-oct19

When Phil wakes up, his eyes sting.

He’s greeted by the moon, full and bright, visible through a torn-up opening in the roof right above him.

He furrows his eyebrows and squints, but the pain behind his eyes doesn’t fade. If anything, the squinting just makes it worse, his vision blurring as his eyes water. The light overwhelms him, and as his eyes begin to adjust, that feeling doesn’t go away. 

An uncomfortable itch forms deep in his skin. 

He shudders, quickly moving his gaze away. 

The room is shrouded in darkness. The only area alight is the bottom half of the mattress and the floor around it, the moonlight pouring down onto it, bright and still. It’s relatively quiet; the only things Phil can hear are the distant crashing of waves and the snoring of a blond teenager to his left. There doesn’t seem to be anything that would’ve woken him up, which is saying a lot, considering how light of a sleeper he is.

That thought is quickly thrown out the window, however, as he glances over a particular spot near the foot of the mattress. A spot that ignites a swift panic in his gut when he notice's it's empty. As soon as his half-asleep brain processes that _he should be there, where the fuck is he_ , a chill ripples up his spine, shuddering past each knob and settling as a dry taste on the roof of his mouth. Despite his sleepiness, he moves to sit up, doing his best to not jostle the two figures resting on his wings. 

Tommy and Techno are where they were when he let himself fall asleep; either side of him, blanketing his wings, well passed out. Techno is lowly muttering something under his breath- Phil's too tired to decipher what- while Tommy is loudly snoring, his face pressed into the black inner-feathers of Phil’s wing. Phil silently winces, thinking about the drool that’s probably gotten on them during the night, but ignores the thought for now, looking around for the missing group member. His eyes are almost completely adjusted by now, but all he can make out is the rotting furniture and the curtains on the windows and door, billowing inward.

As carefully as he can, Phil shuffles to the foot the mattress, gingerly moving his wings out from under Techno and Tommy. Techno doesn’t seem to notice their absence, rolling onto his stomach and shoving his face into his pillow. Tommy, however, turns his head to face towards where Phil was laying, his face scrunching up slightly in discomfort. Phil, for a brief moment, is tempted to lay back down and go back to sleep, curled up with his group, but seeing them laying there, a core member of said group completely absent, is enough to keep him moving.

Phil stands up. The room they’re in is the only room in the house, and standing up, he still can’t see anyone. Doubts that the missing group member was even in the house confirmed, Phil folds his wings against his back, not wanting them to crash into anything and wake up Techno or Tommy up, and steps away from the foot of the mattress, further into the room. 

That's when he hears it. It’s faint, hushed and controlled, but it’s there. Buried under the crashing of waves and the chirping of cicadas, the snoring of a teenager and the hissing of angry wind; Phil reckons a human wouldn’t be able to pick it up. But Phil can, he can practically taste it, resting on his tongue among the salt and anxiety and stale bread the group had torn up and savored the previous night. Music. It’s rhythmic, delicate, tense- as if the individual playing it is holding back. As if with one too-loud, melodic strum, some silently understood code will be broken- as if something else is waiting to fill the silence in between the changing of chords and the strums of the strings.

Phil silently walks to the broken window at the front of the house, unable to be closed as the group slept. The torn, water-stained curtains nearly whip his face as he reaches the window, but he just manages to dodge them. Wind whistling in his ears, he pokes his head out the window and looks out at the shore, eyes beginning to water from the salt lingering in the air.

A figure sits on the end of the pier. His back is turned away from the house, an instrument in his hands. He sounds like the source of the music. Phil can’t make out any of his features from the distance, but instantly recognizes who he is regardless. His wings flutter in anticipation as he walks back from the window, taking note to stay quiet as he heads outside.

Goosebumps quickly form on Phil’s arms as he pushes through the thin curtain hanging from the doorframe. The cold is bitter, numbing, and his body instantly cries out for him to go back inside. He ignores it. The music is clearer now, repetitive strums and low, sad humming. The notes pierce through Phil, wrap around his mind like tendrils and drag him by the hair across the ocean-damp sand and towards the pier. Behind him, his wings shift uncomfortably.

The soles of his feet sigh in relief once he reaches the pier, no longer walking along the rough pebbles but instead wood, damp and looking ready to cave in at any moment. As Phil approaches the figure, the song ends. The figure readjusts his hands on the neck of his guitar to start up again, and Phil manages a small, “It’s cold,” soft and open-ended.

The figure blinks over his shoulder at Phil, seeming oddly calm for someone who just got snuck up on. The cold light of the moon bounces off the scales on his face, making them look bright and silver. His hood is pulled back, showing his hair to be a mess, frizzy and stringy and damp, the curled tips covering the tops of his eyes and making them watery due to the lingering salt. His mouth is slightly agape, revealing rows of pointed, discolored canines. 

“Phil.” The figure breathes out. He turns back to his guitar and scoots over to the side, allowing room for Phil to sit. Despite his disdain for the water and the clear dampness of the pier, Phil does anyway, letting his wings unfurl behind him. One drapes over the side of the pier, the tips of the feathers dipping into the water, the other stretching out behind the figure and over his tail. He’s strumming a new melody. It’s quiet, sad and slow. He seems relaxed.

Up close like this, the figure's eyes look black. All pupil and sclera, glistening dots of ink on a blank page. Like a pocket of night sky, dotted with white. An inverted star. Phil glances down to watch his fingers move along the neck of his guitar, swift and knowing, as if he had the chords permanently embedded in his brain. “I haven’t heard this one yet.” The figure doesn’t say anything, so he adjusts, moving his gaze onto the water. Onto the stars and moon reflecting onto the black, rippling waves. Discomfort builds under his skin. “Did you write it recently?”

“Last night. Couldn’t sleep.” Phil hums, letting his legs fall over the front of the pier. The figure keeps his legs crossed on the pier, but they twitch, as if fighting to dip into the murky ebony. Fighting to be dragged down by the waves. “I just… being here, by the ocean, it…” The man looks over at Phil, who moves his gaze from the sea to the sky. At the spots of white dotting the dark violet and black that reminds him so much of himself. “I mean, you get it, yeah?”

“Yeah.” The figure looks back down at his guitar, continuing to play the chords that make Phil want to soar up into the dark grey clouds and never come down. “Though I suppose that’s the point.”

“It hurts.” The waves ripple against the pillars holding the pier up, dampening the bottoms of Phil’s pants with salt and dirt. “I mean, it always does, but here, with the sand and the waves and the ships, I just… it feels so… so…”

“Isolating?”

“Tempting.” Phil blinks. “I just want to… go home, I guess. Curl up in the waves and never touch the land again.” 

He misses a chord.

“Do you?”

“That's the issue.” Phil brushes the inside of his wing against the figure’s back. “I don’t. I don’t, but my mind tells me to. Screams at me too. Like I’ll die if I don’t. Like I’ll choke on the air, like I’ll-“

“You’ll suffocate.”

“Yeah.” The figure croaks. Phil manages an encouraging smile.

“I get that.” The torn side fin on the figure’s tail brushes against his leg. “It feels like you’re trapped in a space that’s not meant for you, but you’re not allowed to find one that is. Like—”

“Like you’re almost there, but just… not quite. You know you don't want to go back, but it's like some instinct is taking control over logic. It's just... screaming at you that with one movement, leap, dive, the headache of fighting it could go away. You could just... go.”

“Yeah. It sucks."

There's a beat of silence.

"I just wish I didn't have to fight it."

"Do you think you would?" The figure's strumming stutters, but quickly steadies. "If you weren't destined to a lifetime of aimlessly swimming, if you were... able to swim properly, would you stay?"

"Would you stay, Phil?"

Phil's mind blanks. He doesn't have an answer.

"There you go."

Phil, reluctantly, understands. His question is answered, even if the figures is not.

They’re silent for a bit. The figure plays chords and hums notes, his eyes soft and glossy. Phil can’t imagine his are much different.

“Hey Wil?”

Wilbur looks at Phil through his peripheral vision.

“This one got any words?”

Wilbur blinks. He stops strumming, pauses for a brief moment, and sets his fingers onto another chord. His claws glisten silver in the moonlight. 

He sings.

Eventually, the sun begins to rise. The stars in Wilbur’s eyes dissipate, and his irises fade from cold, sharp black to a comforting, soft brown. His body looks warm in the rising sun, the streaks of pink and orange reflecting off his scales and bringing a sense of life to him he didn’t have in the dark. 

As Wilbur rubs his eyes dry and sends Phil goofy smile, Phil, not for the first time, thinks about how there’s always been two versions of Wilbur. 

There’s the Wilbur who longs for the crashing of waves, for the bitter cold the ocean brings at night. The Wilbur who fights the urge to return to a home that was lost so long ago, who writes songs with the same three chords and lyrics humming his screams, his cries, his begging to return home; to a black abyss he hasn’t let himself sink into in years. 

He’s the Wilbur with the blinding, sickly pale scales. The Wilbur with the eyes black and glossy enough you’d think they were those of a shark. The Wilbur who lets his hood fall down and his gills see the light of the night, who hunches over his guitar like it’s all he has left. In a way, Phil supposes, it is.

He's the Wilbur who always seems relaxed. The Wilbur who never tenses his shoulders or has a too-tight expression, the Wilbur who's clawed fingers move just as freely and fluidly along the neck of his guitar as his torn-up shark tail does behind him. The Wilbur who, in the dark, with only the night sky giving him light, truly looks like what he is- a creature of the sea, a creature who craves the saltwater and the cold, and who's scales only shine their true colors when he's submerged in her inky black.

The other Wilbur is the one Phil sees as the two walk to the beach house to find Techno and Tommy awake and active, Tommy eating berries from a small pouch on the mattress and Techno, still blinking the sleep from his eyes, looking over their worn paper map with a compass and ink-dipped feather. He’s the Wilbur who greets them both with a toothy smile, bright and sharp, giggling when Tommy jokingly flinches and hip-checking Techno, telling him to loosen up, he’d only just awoken! 

He’s the Wilbur with the warm, pink-tinted scales. The Wilbur with the bright, clear brown eyes that make Phil think of toasted bread and the plush soil under the soles of his sandals. He’s the Wilbur with the confident demeanor, the pulled up hood hiding his gills. He’s the Wilbur with the charming, reassuring mannerisms, kind and bright and patient.

He's the Wilbur who always seems a little too tense. He's the Wilbur who swallows a little too thickly and runs his tongue across his canines whenever the group pass by a body of water, who's footsteps always seem more like stomps than casual movements. He’s the Wilbur who, as the group walk by the ocean on their way to their horses, looks restrained. The Wilbur who’s hands tighten and press crescent marks into his palms under his cloak. The Wilbur who, when Phil sends him a concerned glance over his shoulder, smiles a little too tightly. 

He's the Wilbur who’s eyes look too cold in the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twitter at [@wilbursand](https://twitter.com/wilbursand)
> 
> i probably won’t write anything else in this exact au, but i do have a similar, multi-chapter fantasy au being planned with a mutual and i, so you have that to look forward to if you're interested


End file.
